


Stalker

by DawnSumner



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:48:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnSumner/pseuds/DawnSumner
Summary: Jessica Daniels has a stalker. He follows her from city to city, murdering countless women in his sick twisted game. He's saving her for last.Will the BAU be able to save Jessica from her dark demon or will he consume her?(Going a different, slightly darker path with this one. We'll see how it turns out.)
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

She was cold. Twenty two Jessica Daniels tucked her small frame into her winter jacket, despite it being a crisp seventy degrees in the small Virginia town. Head down, the petite redhead did her best to avoid any unwanted attention. She was new to this place and had yet to get the lay of the land. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be here long enough. He would find her. He always did.

Jessica dipped into a dark alley. It didn’t take her long to figure out that it was a mistake. Her foot caught on something. She tripped. Her palms landed in something sticky. She fought the urge to vomit. Someone approached from behind. She searched the ground for something to defend herself with. Her fingers bumped against a metal pole. She snatched it up. A hand caught her shoulder. She swung the pole. A man grunted, his flashlight dropping to the concrete. He stumbled backwards.

It was a police officer. He clutched the bleeding wound that she had inflicted. Shit. Another one appeared in the alley, blinding her with light. He called for backup. Should she make a run for it? Or try to explain? Would they listen? The others never did.

Before she could make up her mind, the second officer already had the barrel of his gun directed at her. She couldn’t get away, not without risking a bullet in her back. She held her hands up. The officer’s light fell, revealing exactly what it was that she had tripped over. A young woman’s body lay before her, glassy eyes staring blankly up. A thin line decorated her neck. She was dead, her blood pooling around Jessica’s feet. Her palms were covered in her blood. 

Something drew the second officer’s attention from her. Jessica lurched to the side, turning before he had a chance to realize just what was happening. Jessica heard him call after her, heard the distinct sound of bullets ricocheting against the stone bricks that surrounded her. She didn’t stop. She couldn’t allow herself to be taken. She would be too easy of a target that way. He would find her. He would take her. He would do unspeakable things to her before finally ending this miserable excuse that she called a life.

She came to a fence. It was too large to climb. She dug her fingers into her, gasping for air. Sweat trickled down her back. She could make out the distinct shape of another person on the other side of the fence. For a second, she thought it was another police officer. But as the figure approached, she caught the flash of light against the knife he gripped between his fingers. He had found her.

She backed from the fence. Hands took hold of her. She screamed. The hands shoved her forward, the side of her face scraping against concrete. She fought the person on top of her as best she could. 

“You’re under arrest.” It was the officer from before, the one who’s partner she had inadvertently struck with the metal pipe.

“Please!” She screamed. “I didn’t do this! It was him!”

He didn’t listen. They never did. Something popped. The officer’s weight disappeared from off her. She scrambled to her feet, hands still secured behind her back. He stood on the opposite side of the fence, barrel of his gun now aimed directly at her. He wouldn’t shoot her. No, he wanted her to suffer. A bullet between the eyes was too quick, too painless. With the promise of more to come, he sunk back into the shadows. His work was not done yet. He had more to do, more carnage to inflict, before returning to finish what he had started all those years ago. 

More voices echoed from behind her. She couldn’t move, eyes trained on the officer before her. With her hands still secured behind her back, it was evident that she had not been the one to end his life. She didn’t feel so well. Her stomach turned to knots, throat seizing. She doubled over. She hadn’t had a decent meal in a few days so there was nothing to expel but bile.

She crumpled to her knees, half leaning against the concrete wall behind her for support. She was tired ...tired of running, tired of never being able to stay in one place for longer than a few weeks.

“Just kill me!” She screamed towards the shadows, knowing that he was no longer there. “Please!” She begged him. 

More people emerged, each armed and each directing their weapons of choice towards her. She couldn’t bring herself to fight any longer. One of the people made their approach. He was an older man. He said something, his voice filled with concern. Why should he care for her wellbeing? To him, she was just a monster ...something to hunt. That’s what everyone else thought.

“She assaulted one of my men!” A raised voice drew her attention from the man crouched at her side.

“She isn’t our unsub.” The man he spoke to shot back. He barely looked at her. “Our profile-”

“I don’t give a rats-ass about your profile.” The officer turned his attention to her. “You’ll pay for this….” He moved towards her.

Jessica withdrew, drawing her knees to her chest and tucked her chin down towards her chest. If her hands had been free, she would have moved them to cover her head. A whimper fell from her lips.

“Hey guys!” Another voice called, this one from the opposite side of the fence. A dark skinned man appeared. In between gloves fingers, he held a key piece of evidence that would serve to exonerate her. It was a bullet. It wasn’t like him to be so sloppy. “I think I’ve got something.”

“He’ll...he’ll kill you all.” Jessica found herself muttering. This simply statement was enough to draw every single eye towards her.

“Can we get these handcuffs off?” The man still crouched beside her called out. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

“I’ll never be safe….” Jessica argued. “Never.”

She blacked out.

  
  



	2. Chapter Two

She slept. For days, the girl identified as Jessica Daniels did nothing but sleep. And, for days, Spencer Reid did nothing but watch her sleep. He had been the agent designated to watch over her, to protect her from whatever demons haunted the shadows that surrounded her.

The sheriff was none too pleased over the fact that they had yet to arrest her. Despite their assurances that she was not the unsub, he insisted she be transferred into his custody. Hotch had refused. She was a material witness, he’d claimed. It wasn’t technically a lie. She could know something. Anything. If only she would wake up.

Spencer slouched in the dingy hospital chair. Face cradled in the palm of his hand, he dozed on and off. Screams woke him. Jessica was awake. She frantically ripped at the tubes protruding from her arms, fighting the blankets that covered her. 

“Hey, hey. You’re okay. You’re okay.” Spencer did his best to comfort the frightened girl. Her reaction? Her palm connected with the side of his face, hard enough to push him back from her. A nurse came in. Followed by another. They pinned her down. One called out for five CC’s of  haloperidol.

“We need her lucid!” Spencer argued. Haloperidol was known to impair memory and focus. The girl could tell them nothing if she was too high to function. The doctor ignored him. The second Jessica saw the needle, all hell broke loose so to speak. She began to flail, accusing the doctors of working for “him.”

“No! Get away from me!” She screamed, tears streaming down her face.

Spencer stepped between her and the doctor. “Put down the needle.” He demanded. 

After a few minutes of heated conversation between the two, the doctor finally relented. He and the others left the room, leaving him alone with the frightened and agitated Jessica.

“Jessica?” He didn’t approach, nothing that would only serve to freak her out more. “I need you to calm down, okay?”

“Who-who are you?”

He reached into his pocket, pulling out his badge. “My name is Spencer Reid. I work for the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit. We’re here to help you.”

She clutched her arms to her chest, eyes darted from corner to corner. “I-I didn’t kill those women.”

As they spoke, she appeared to relax. Spencer learned much in those short ten minutes. Jessica Daniels had gone missing on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, after revealing to the local sheriff’s department that she had a stalker. No one believed her. When she vanished, everyone simply assumed she’d run away. They were right. She had. She had fled the small city of her birth to escape her stalker. He’d followed, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. She blamed herself. If she’d never run from him, maybe he would have just taken her instead.

“There’s no way of nothing that.” Spencer did his best to assure her. She didn’t believe him.

By the time the rest of the team made their arrival, Jessica had slipped back into her world of shadows.  
He relayed the information he had given to Hotch and Morgan. “So, she’s been running from this freak for four years?” Derek didn’t seem to believe what he had been told. “Why doesn’t he just go after her?”

Even Spencer didn’t know the answer to that question. If didn’t make sense, that this unsub would continually seek out substitutes for the obvious target of his rage and not devolved...especially after four years. 

“Whatever part she plays in his delusion, it’s clear his intent is to make her suffer.” Hotch turned to Spencer. “Reid. I want you to stay with her, try to get any information about this unsub as you can. If he’s watching her, he knows by now that she’s in police custody. She’ll need around the clock protection. Whoever he is, Jessica is the key in finding him.”

Spencer couldn’t find a way to tell Hotch that, even if she knew who he was, Jessica might never be able to identify the unsub. It was possible that she’d never seen him or even spoken to him. Nonetheless, Hotch was right. There was no telling what the unsub would do now that the object of his rage was out of his reach. Would he take another victim? Or would he decide to finally target her directly?

Spencer kept careful watch over her. The two spoke on and off throughout the night. Each time, she revealed more and more of herself. She was an only child. She came from a broken home. She never mentioned the unsub again or what led her to flee from him. She was avoiding the subject. He didn’t blame her. This man had inflicted years of mental torture upon her. It was normal for her not to want to talk about him.

When morning broke, word came of another victim. Another redhead, just like the rest. It was clear this was a message. The unsub had broken routine, etching her name in the flesh of this victim. He didn’t tell Jessica this, seeking to shield her from the truth...that these women were dying because of her. Not that she didn’t already know this.

The doctor came. This time, she didn’t freak out. She allowed the doctor to touch her, to examine her. Spencer stepped from the room. Once his examination was finished, the doctor came out.

“She’s suffering from exhaustion. Other than that, she’s perfectly healthy.” He ticked a few boxes on his clipboard. “I’m more concerned with her mental state. She’s hypervigilant, easily agitated.”

Spencer spoke with the doctor for a few more minutes, doing his best to explain just why she was experiencing the symptoms that the doctor had mentioned. He couldn’t begin to fathom what such a prolonged amount of time spent in fear for your life would do to a person. 

By the time he returned to the room, she was no longer in the bed. He heard the flush of a toilet, indicating she had travelled to the bathroom. He stood there, hands shoved into his pockets, waiting for her return. The minutes stretched on. Spencer grew concerned.

He approached the door, rapping on it with bare knuckles. “Jessica?” He called to her. No answer. Hesitantly, he tried the knob. The door swung up. She lay on the linoleum floor, shards of glass sprinkled around her. She clutched one in her fingers. She’d sliced a vein in her wrist. Blood pooled around her arm. Spencer flung himself towards her, ripping his jacket from off his back.

“I need some help here!” He called out to whomever might be listening. He pressed the cloth against her seeping wound until a nurse came to the rescue. She hadn’t sliced deep enough to cause permanent damage. She would live. 


	3. Chapter 3

They each wanted something different from her. With each new arrival, came a barrage of questions. She didn’t know his name. Didn’t know his face. She was placed on a forty eight hour suicide watch...which meant she was safe for two more days. She curled beneath the hospital sheets. When was the last time she’d gotten more than two or three hours of sleep at one time? Hell, she couldn’t remember that far back.

Her mind was clearer, more precise. The fog of sleep deprivation was lifted. She could breathe. For the first time in four years, Jessica could breathe. The light to her room flickered on. She groaned. She buried her face into the pillow, silently willing whoever had evaded her night to simply fade away.

“Hello, Jessica.”

That voice. It sent spiders crawling up her spine. She tossed the sheet aside. It was not her stalker. In her mind, it was someone far worse.

“D-dad?”

He stood a few feet from her. He didn’t approach. He wasn’t alone. Agent Rossi stood to his left, Agent Reid to his right. They gauged her response. 

“These nice agents called me.” he regarded her with an emotionless expression. “When they told me you’d been found…” He moved forwards.

Images of her childhood, of the beatings she’d endured, came rushing back. These were memories she thought she had escaped. She was wrong. Jessica flinched. Both Agent Rossi and Reid saw her reaction. 

“I think that’s enough for one day.” Agent Rossi was the first to speak. “Jessica has been through quite an ordeal. She needs to rest.”

“What my daughter needs is to come home. Now.” His eyes dropped to his bandaged wrists. “Still attempting to take the easy way out, I see.”

“You’re daughter is a grown woman.” Dr. Reid interjected, placing himself between the pair. “And I don’t think she wants to go anywhere with you.”

“What my daughter wants is irrelevant. She’s in no state to be making decisions on her own.”

Jessica was frozen. The stalker had stolen four years of her life. The man before her had stolen her entire childhood. Her stomach turned to knots. She felt sick. It took a few moments for that fear to turn to boiling rage.

“Get….out…” She managed, head shaking. “I don't ...I don’t want you here.”

Her father was not the sort of man to take no for an answer. There was nothing he could do with two agents now blocking his path He fought down the boiling rage, making a promise that this conversation was not over. He vanished from the room. 

“Why the hell did you call him?” Jessica demanded to know.

“We didn’t.” Rossi assured. “He isn’t listed as your emergency contact-”

Jessica stopped listening. As if having one demon wasn’t bad enough, now she had to contend with another. The feeling of being free vanished. She felt more trapped than ever.

“We have some more questions-” Agent Rossi spoke again.

“I’ve told you everything!” Jessica blurted. She ran her fingers through her disheveled hair. “I don’t know his name. I’ve never seen him. I’ve never spoken to him. All I know is that he shows up in whatever city I happen to be in.”

“How does he find you?” It’s Spencer that asks this time.

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’m careful. No credit cards. Cash only. I work menial jobs that pay under the table. I use a payphone or disposable cell phone if I need to make any calls.”

Spencer and Rossi exchange glances. She knew what they were thinking. It’s what they always thought. How did she know to use cash only? Or that a phone can be tracked. Because she wasn’t an idiot, that’s why. 

She spent the next half hour explaining how she’d first noticed the stalking activity when her best friend of ten years had disappeared. A few days later, her body had been found. A few days after that, her blood splattered friendship bracelet had shown up in her mailbox.

The same happened with her boyfriend’s sister a few months later. This time, he’d left a note. No, she didn’t still have the note. No, she didn’t still have the bracelet. After the second body, she’d packed her things and left. She’d told no one where she was going...not that she had anyone to tell. Her mother was dead. Her father ...well, he was the last person she wanted to talk to. 

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

She scoffed. “I did. I told them I had a stalker. They didn’t believe me. They thought that I killed Anna. They had me under surveillance for months. Than, when Nat died….” She trailed off. “Look, I’ve been over this a million times already. I’m….I’m tired.”

Rossi’s eyes dropped to her bandaged wrists. “Is that why you cut yourself?”

“At least, if I’m dead, maybe the killing stops.”

“We don’t know that.”

“I know he started killing because of me. That this is all some sick, twisted game. I wish he would just fucking killing me already.”

“You shouldn’t say that.” Dr. Reid argued.

“Oh, why the hell not? I’m tired of his games. I’m tired of moving from place to place, never knowing when he’ll show up or who he’ll kill next. I can’t make friends, I can’t get close to anyone. Do you have any idea of what four years of isolation does to a person? I feel like I’m going fucking insane.” Jessica rambled. “I want it to end. I want this nightmare to be over!”

“And it will be...when we catch this son of a bitch.” Rossi told her.

He seemed...so sure. Jessica didn’t dare hope for a future without this demon that haunted her every waking moment. She’d stopped hoping a long time ago. The best she could hope for now was that he would come after her. Her death wouldn’t be quick. He would torture her, do unspeakable things to her. But, at least, this nightmare would be over. She could rest.

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.” Jessica muttered, burying her face into her knees.


End file.
